accessible forum software

[llama]

Hi,

Does anybody have an opinion over which of the many PHP-based forum applications is the most accessible?

cheers

Stephen

[Jona]

I can't be exact, but I've seen a lot of hints in the source code (not PHP source, HTML source) of PHPBB (http://www.phpbb.com/) that demonstrate they at least know HTML. PHPBB is also the forum software used at AccessifyForum.com (http://www.accessifyforum.com/) which is the forum for the Accessify (http://www.accessify.com/) site.

[the tree]

We can only hope for a completley CSS based forum, no tables and 100% accessable.

[Jona]

Originally posted by the tree
We can only hope for a completley CSS based forum, no tables and 100% accessable.

A forum should have tables. If there are no tables, the forum is not accessible.

[MstrBob]

Yes, actually, Forums are a great example of tabular data used on the web. They are most appropriately marked up as tables for the different forums and threads.

[Ben Rogers]

Forums would be the best example of a place where CSS and tables will work beautfully together. Imagine how much repetitive presentational markup there is in forums- that could all be replaced with a few classes and IDs. All the table markup would be the caption (that thread's name) the colgroup (info and post), then the tbody, which would be like <tr id="post00001"><td><h4>Poster</h4>
<img src="/avatar.php?user=poster" alt="" height="50" width="50" />
<dl>
<dt>Registered</dt><dd>November 2004</dd>
<dt>Location</dt><dd>Timbuctu</dd>
<dt>Post count</dt><dd>8167</dd>
</dl>
Posted at 11-21-04, 3:06pm</td>
<td>This is my post, I like <em>cheese</em>, and <em class="blu">the colour blue</em>.<hr />&raquo;
- Poster, <a href="http://ww.example.com/">my site</a>.
<div> <ul class="actions">
<li><img src="/forum/images/off.gif" alt="Poster is offline" /> |
<li><a href="member.php?act=getinfo&amp;user=poster"><img src="/forum/images/profile.gif"&raquo;
alt="Click Here to See the Profile for the tree" /></a></li>
<li><a href="private.php?act=newmessage&amp;user=poster"><img src="/forum/images/sendpm.gif"&raquo;
alt="Click here to Send the tree a Private Message" /></a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.example.com/"><img src="/forum/images/home.gif"&raquo;
alt="Visit poster's homepage!" border="0"></a></li>
<li><a href="search.php?act=finduser&amp;user=poster"><img src="/forum/images/find.gif"&raquo;
alt="Find more posts by Poster></a></li>
<li><a href="member2.php?act=addlist&amp;userlist=buddy&amp;user=poster">&raquo;
<img src="/forum/images/buddy.gif" alt="Add poster to your buddy list"></a></li>
</ul>
<ul class="reply">
<li><a href="editpost.php?act=editpost&amp;postid=277769"><img src="/forum/images/edit.gif"&raquo;
alt="Edit/Delete Message"></a></li>
<li><a href="newreply.php?act=newreply&amp;postid=277769"><img src="/forum/images/quote.gif"&raquo;
alt="Reply w/Quote"></a></li>
</ul></div></td></tr>
<tr>
Instead of... well, view source on these forums.

[llama]

Thanks for your comments.

Looking at phpBB, it seems I should be able to find a way of using the templating system to create a clean XHTML based version.

[Jona]

Good luck! :)

[Ben Rogers]

Originally posted by Jona
Good luck! :) Ditto. Hope you get things up'n'running nice and smooth. ;)